If we’re being honest about 2017’s most impactful player then we have to say it was the quarterback who was deemed toxic for the crime of making us think. Kaepernick had already changed football in the summer of 2016 when he refused to stand for the national anthem. His plea for the nation to start a conversation about race moved other players to speak out as well, breaking through an unwritten edict that football players should be seen but not heard. By sitting he freed others to take stands they wouldn’t have dared to make.